Center for Human-Computer Interaction and Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, USA.
IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph. 2012 Apr;18(4):597-606. doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2012.42.
Volume visualization has been widely used for decades for analyzing datasets ranging from 3D medical images to seismic data to paleontological data. Many have proposed using immersive virtual reality (VR) systems to view volume visualizations, and there is anecdotal evidence of the benefits of VR for this purpose. However, there has been very little empirical research exploring the effects of higher levels of immersion for volume visualization, and it is not known how various components of immersion influence the effectiveness of visualization in VR. We conducted a controlled experiment in which we studied the independent and combined effects of three components of immersion (head tracking, field of regard, and stereoscopic rendering) on the effectiveness of visualization tasks with two x-ray microscopic computed tomography datasets. We report significant benefits of analyzing volume data in an environment involving those components of immersion. We find that the benefits do not necessarily require all three components simultaneously, and that the components have variable influence on different task categories. The results of our study improve our understanding of the effects of immersion on perceived and actual task performance, and provide guidance on the choice of display systems to designers seeking to maximize the effectiveness of volume visualization applications.
体积可视化技术已经被广泛应用于分析各种数据集，从 3D 医学图像到地震数据再到古生物学数据。许多人提出使用沉浸式虚拟现实 (VR) 系统来查看体积可视化，并且有一些关于 VR 对此有帮助的传闻证据。然而，对于更高程度的沉浸感对体积可视化的影响，几乎没有进行过任何实证研究，也不知道沉浸感的各个组成部分如何影响 VR 中可视化的效果。我们进行了一项对照实验，研究了沉浸感的三个组成部分（头部跟踪、视野和立体渲染）对两个 X 射线显微镜计算机断层扫描数据集的可视化任务的有效性的独立和综合影响。我们报告了在涉及这些沉浸感组成部分的环境中分析体积数据的显著好处。我们发现，这些好处不一定需要同时具备所有三个组成部分，而且这些组成部分对不同的任务类别有不同的影响。我们研究的结果提高了我们对沉浸感对感知和实际任务绩效的影响的理解，并为寻求最大化体积可视化应用程序有效性的设计师提供了显示系统选择的指导。
